After Groupon, LivingSocial’s IPO is Planned

An American based e-commerce company - LivingSocial, has grown swiftly in the past 4 years. Started in 2007 as a deal of the day company with just 4 employees, it gained reputation and has reached greater heights. Initially it had been doing services like PickYourFive & BuyYourFriendADrink daily deals which were launched in 2009, and these services became the top grossing venture of LivingSocial. Since then, there was no turning back for the company.

LivingSocial was also the second prevalent website dedicated to daily coupons on a selection spree of investment banks for heaving $1 billion in an Initial Public Offering (IPO). IPO is nothing but the act of offering some shares of the company to the public for the first time. This is generally done by small companies but even large companies do this with an aim to become publicly traded. Currently discussions are being held with top banks like Barclays Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Allen & Co. etc to go ahead with this fabulous offer. However, the finalization regarding which bank is in for the IPO would be done by the end of this year.

The IPO concept isn’t new at all; LivingSocial is eying this IPO concept on the footsteps of certain internet companies like Yandex NV, Renren Inc, LinkedIn Corp. and the likes. An interesting factoid to be noted in this context is that the arch-rival of LivingSocial i.e. Groupon Inc, has also filed for a $750 million IPO this year.

However LivingSocial spokespersons are in no mood to publicize about this IPO deal until all is said and done. Yet one thing is for sure, that the company is tripling its employees to match the labor force of its rival organization Groupon Inc. The LivingSocial’s valuation would vary amidst $10 to 15 billion, which is almost near to the $15 to 20 billion valuation of Groupon Inc.

This IPO mania is currently making rounds through all the top grossing organization because the stock prices soared up very high on the first day itself. However certain companies’ stock values slid gradually after some timeframe.

With IPO talks on, LivingSocial is joining the number of companies which are going social including the top social networking site Facebook. Apart from increasing the labor force, LivingSocial is supposed to increase the number of cities they are servicing deal offers. Already Groupon who is losing their profits since 2009, and especially losing 4% of sales in the last year has started chanting the IPO mantra. Their arch rival, the gainer of the lost 4% of Groupon in the previous year LivingSocial is likely to follow. However, the close associates of LivingSocial has not uttered anything regarding this.

“A competitive world offers only two possibilities - Either you can lose or you have to change (in order to win)” - We guess this is the strategy LivingSocial is following in order to move to the topmost position among the daily coupons website.